Institutionalising Deliberative Democracy. The Basque case.

From the 4th to the 6th of October took place the Democracy R&D network annual conference. Arantzazulab members co-facilitated two workshops, below we share the key ideas presented in one session.

On the 6th of October we co-facilitated a workshop together with Claudia Chwalisz from Democracy Next, Kyle Redman from NewDemocracy Foundation, Felipe Rey from ideemos, David Schecter coordinator of the Democracy R&D network and Ione Ardaiz from Arantzazulab.

We organized this session to open the reflection on a concept and a word that is gaining more relevance in the Deliberative Democracy space, and that is: institutionalisation. We contrasted with participants: what do we mean by institutionalisation? Is this the word that best describes our intentions or are there other words that we can use instead? What are the conditions needed for success? What are the challenges we might face? What could we do to overcome those challenges? There are often different layers of government concerned – what needs to be included at each layer to institutionalise? How detailed does the enabling legislation need to be? What are the criteria /requirements for good enabling legislation? Is the idea of meta-deliberation a good idea? What kind of things could be part of this? Is the long-term goal with institutionalisation to eliminate the need for external practitioners – that all of these skills and competencies exist in an independent government agency?

 

Before diving deep in reflecting on those questions we shared three presentations. Claudia Chwalisz introduced the current state of the debate on institutionalisation, Felipe Rey described the meta-deliberation approach the are building in Colombia and Ione Ardaiz described the work that Arantzazulab is facilitating in the Basque region to innovate on democracy. Below we capture the key ideas of the work that Arantzazulab is developing on institutionalising Deliberative Democracy in the Basque region.

What is institutionalising Deliberative Democracy for Arantzazulab?  

It is creating the conditions to embed deliberative democracy principles, mindsets, and practices in public administrations. Specifically, it requires governments to build the capabilities and knowledge, designing the structures, ensuring the resources, and approving the laws and policies that will enable it. The final goal of institutionalising these approaches is to strengthen the relationship between public administrations and citizens, involving citizens in a more meaningful and effective way in public decision making and public policy making.

The characteristics of an institutionalised deliberative democracy practice are:  

• it will focus on dilemmas or values-based questions. 
• it will follow the principles of good practice established by the OECD.
• it will be convened on a regular basis.
• it will be embedded in the existing institutional system to complement and enrich it.

What are the steps we are taking to institutionalise Deliberative Democracy in the Basque region? 

In a study done by McConnel Family Foundation and Tamarack institute in Canada, they identify three approaches to scaling social innovation. At Arantzazulab we are working on institutionalising Deliberative Democracy following the suggested three strategies: 

• Scaling up: impacting laws and policies.
• Scaling out: impacting greater numbers.
• Scaling deep: impacting on cultural roots.

 

In scaling deep, we have worked on raising awareness on the strengths and positive impact of deliberative democracy, as well as on what does it take to put it in practice and what have been the lessons learned of other regions globally. We have developed capability building sessions with public administration representatives, civil servants, citizens, and social stakeholders.

In the capability building efforts we are systematising the knowledge on how to design and implement Citizens’ Assemblies in the Basque region. We will be translating to Basque the Citizens’ Assembly roadmap guide that DemocracyNext has just published. Simultaneously we have been designing guides to capture the Basque region’s Citizens’ Assemblies lessons learned as well as the developed tools /materials. We are organising the knowledge developed locally based on the following elements: Defining the question; Governance; Content management; Civic lottery; Send letters, sign-up and follow-up; Deliberation sessions; Evaluation; Communication; Recommendations’ follow-up. Our aim is to connect the DemocracyNext roadmap with the specificities of our region.

 

In Scaling out, impacting greater numbers, in 2022 and 2023 we have designed and implemented alongside local institutions and social stakeholders, and with the expert support of the OCDE, DemocracyNext and Deliberativa, two Citizens Assemblies. These have been key to understand what it means to organise a Citizens’ Assembly, build local capabilities and infrastructures, and capture what is the impact that they generate.

Currently we are starting to reflect on two potential opportunities of permanent Citizens’ Assemblies. These designs are inspired by the Ostbelgien model and the Brussels region model. We believe that in institutionalising will be key to design and implement permanent models of deliberative democracy in our local institutions.

Finally, in scaling up, impacting laws and policies, we are starting to explore what are the elements that we need to include in local policies to embed deliberative democracy in public institutions and enable every public administration that has an interest in kicking off a process to have the structures in place to be able to do it.

In this process of anchoring these practices in our public institutions, we will have to consider the different levels of government, specifically: the Basque Government, the provincial councils, and the municipalities. And we will need to explore questions like the following: what should each of these institutions be responsible for? what is the role that each one should have? how will they be connected? what other bodies or working groups should be included?